mgo.licio.us

"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

A surprising number of people on campus believe in Myth #1 (I remember having U-M professors who grumbled about it, and didn't believe it when told otherwise), while you can find plenty of posters on this very site who believe in Myth #2.

The requirements are artificial and expand to take up whatever money comes in. If Bill Gates were to decide that his salary requirements are all of the money Microsoft brings in, then Microsoft is not going to show a profit either.

The business model is only broken if new rowing facilities are critical to the survival of the business. In this case, football and basketball do make great money, probably as good or better than most equivalent pro teams, but they spend a huge chunk of it on crew facilities and other capital intensive projects that will never generate revenue.

I once asked Brandon about his thoughts on why the Adidas contract was necessary and he spouted the same answer he gave to AnnArbor.com. Reality is that he runs for-profit football and basketball teams that donate their profits to a non-profit Athletic Department. There really should be two sets of income and cash flow statements for the department, one based on a for-profit business and the other as a traditional non-profit. Then we could see how the college athletics model really works.

"Myth 4: The athletic department is detached from the university community"

Huh. For a bunch of fall-down easy "Myths" to debunk, this one seems weridly dubious. I can make a pretty good argument that the athletic department really is detached from the university community, and getting more detached all the time.

The athletes have their own study center; the Ross Center. They love it by all accounts, and most say they use it. It is closed to general student populations, right?

Many of the athletes have their own dining facilities.

The athletic campus has never been more isolated from Central Campus, and it is getting more isolated as more sports are relocated to new facilities further and further to the south.

The basketball team(s) now have their own separate home(s) in the Davidson Center.

The golf team and the soccer team are now way down South Main Street (further south than Ann Arbor Pioneer) in their own facilities.

Tennis, wrestling, gymnastics and track are or will be all wholly located in the new far-south athletic campus.

The Ferry Field track is closing. Paving paradise and putting up a parking lot. (A much-needed lot, to be sure.) It was effectively the 'village green' or town square for athletically-minded general population students. The only public-activity place in that part of campus apart from the I.M. Building.